mike the mountain

We did it!! And my knee didn’t blow up!! And we set our personal best time ever!!!

Dreamgirl and I did the Edmonton 1/2 marathon (that’s 21.1 Km) in a grand total of 2:11:39. Better than we ever thought we’d be able to do it in. The day was just perfect… perfect temperature, perfect weather, we were feeling strong, had the right crowd with us… it was just awesome.

This was Chrystal’s first real big organized race (we did a little 10K in Banff once, but it was nothing like this). She’s hooked now, we already signed up for another 1/2 marathon clinic with the Running Room, this time for a race in Las Vegas! We’re also hoping to do a run in Okanagan, BC in the late fall.

A huge thank you goes out to the Running Room at South Edmonton Common for getting us ready for this race. Never would have done it without them. Marla was an awesome group leader who kept us motivated throughout the summer. Thanks to everyone that ran with us and congratulations to us all!

Tomorrow Dreamgirl and I will be running in the Edmonton 1/2 Marathon!! 21.1Km (13.1 miles for you “flat-earth” types) over and around the biggest river valley park in North America.

We’ve been training with The Running Room since April, 5 days a week (when we don’t miss one or two runs), slowly building up our distances. Longest run so far was 20K.

Today is all about hydration and carbo-loading, ie: drinking lots of water and eating lots of pasta. Tonight will be a good stretching session and an early sleep.

This is a big milestone for both of us, for different reasons: Chrystal had never run outdoors prior to starting this clinic, so not only will this be her first real race, but the longest distance she’s ever run in her life!

I got into running a few years back, did a bunch of races around Ontario, eventually decided I was going to run a marathon. I did the Running Room clinic in Toronto, got about 2/3rds of the way through when we started doing hill training, and snap. IT Band. I took a few weeks off, did some physio, then after a couple ok light runs I decided to try and do the marathon.

Not a good idea.

It started getting sore about half way through, then right in front of the 31 Km marker it seized on me. Couldn’t stretch it out, couldn’t walk it out… but I wasn’t going to give up… so I did my best Terry Fox impression for the last 11.2 Kilometers. It was slow, it was ugly, but I finished. Couldn’t walk for a couple weeks afterwards, but I finished.

Haven’t run 2 steps since. Until this clinic.

I’ve been terrified every run, waiting for that twinge of pain to shoot up my right leg, but nothing came. I bought great shoes, stretching like Gumby every run… so far I’ve been fine! That’s what this race means to me: I’ve made it through all the training, once I finish this race I’ll know that I don’t have to worry about anything stopping me from continuing to run. Maybe even do another marathon, try to redeem myself completely!

The coolest video created with 987 Polaroids and no computer compositing you’ll probably ever see:

Process Enacted: by Jordan C. Greenhalgh

I wonder what kind of root beer would taste best in cupcake form… I’ve always loved Dad’s, the stuff they sell at the big Conklin fairs in the giant wooden kegs taste fantastic (probably just some no-name generic cheapo brand, but the whole fairground experience makes everything taste like magic), there used to be a local pop… brewery? pop-ery? what do you call a place that makes pop?… anyway, there used to be a local company called “Happy Pop” that made a whole line of amazing sodas in stubby glass bottles with a big yellow smiley face on the side. I bought it by the case every chance I got, but they’re long since out of business. I miss Happy Pop. The Lime Rickey was incredible.

Sorry about the post flood lately… I haven’t been keeping up with my bloggy-blog in the last few months, but I kept tossing stuff in my “to post” file. The last couple days I’ve been trying to get through it all, and I’m finally caught up.

Of course, this has all been at the expense of actual work, so I won’t be spending quite so much time playing on here in the future (I hope!). A couple times a week should suffice. Hope that’s cool with you too.

Your desktop is probably the one picture you’re going to look at more often than any other during the course of your day. Why not make it an enjoyable view?

Working for a small company like ours, I get to flex my marketing-design muscles a little bit once in a while. Having no real skill, I try to keep things as simple and clean looking as possible, blatently copying the successes of others. However, it is good to have a resource for the occasional original idea.

I’m trying to stay on top of a few basic tricks with GIMP… hoping to be able to play around a little more once we finally get a decent camera and start really shooting!

So far I’ve been able to copy and paste every command I’ve needed to enter into the terminal via detailed online tutorials. But it would be nice to actually grasp what the heck I’ve been doing for the last while.

Still not quite 100% with Ubuntu. I tried watching a fullscreen video a couple days ago, kept freezing up, dropping frames, etc., on a vid that plays fine on my 4 year old iBook. Something ain’t right. Also, had to hard-reset after it locked up while totally idle except for a basic screensaver. Hmm.

I’m amazingly more tolerant of minor bugs when they come with a system offered freely and supported passionately, as opposed to one that charges stupidly and treats me like a criminal. I’m willing to invest the effort to get this to work.

I think I’ve posted about this before, but it’s cool enough to get my attention again. I love this idea, and it sounds like a perfect way to chew through some of those classic stories I’ve always meant to read.

I used to always have 2-4 books on the go at any one time; typically one good engrossing fiction to read before bed, one way-over-my-head intellectual/science/philosophy book to read during the day when I needed to stretch my brain, and sometimes a light biography/memoir that was like an easy conversation. Don’t always have time for all that these days, but I’m signing up for one of these books right now (I’ve wanted to read Flatland since I first heard of it as well).

Thanks again for the head’s up Wil!